A client of mine recently showed me a video of Kanye West being interviewed.

Ye was asked a question, and he sort of went into a deep pause before responding. Immediately, the interviewers jumped on it.

Do you need me to say the question again? Should we take a break and come back to it?

They were basically punishing him for taking a brief moment to think. This is a common practice that frustrates introverts and people on the spectrum and anyone who would rather consider the truth than just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

I loved his response.

Ye basically said, “No! We're not going to ‘Jimmy Kimmel’ this. We're not taking a break. You're going to wait. You're going to wait for me to think this through. You asked me a serious question. I'm going to take time to think through my answer.”

What I love about this video is that Kanye is unapologetic about who he is. He's shameless about the fact that he needs time to think about an answer, and rather than conform to the constraints that they're trying to put on him.

He’s saying, you're on my time now. If you want to talk to me you have to deal with me as I am. I'm not going to adjust for you. If you don't like this, you can leave.

That was the subtext of his confrontation. That's shamelessness.

If you’re introverted, or quiet, or like to think things through, or have a tendency to waffle before you arrive at your conclusion, you don’t need to apologise or adjust to other people’s preferences!

While you can always improve your communication skills over time, someone else’s impatience is their problem, not yours.

Just make it clear: this is how I am. This is my communication style at this time in my life. Get on board with it, or go find someone else to talk to.

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